Ancestors

Written by Julien Roncaglia on 2025-01-29 at 15:41

Seeing so much bad takes on Google Maps change of the Gulf of Mexico name...

Maps are always localized from a point of view, they never are universal.

Feature names, borders, projection, center, coordinate systems, what should be hidden due to privacy/military constraints, ... all of that need consideration.

Trying to find Taiwan (country) on a map while in china ? Looking at the Ukranian city of Marioupol while in Russia ? or even Glorioso Islands as part of France while in Madagascar ? Nope.

In countries that have theses the easier is to refer to the administrative body that define maps or names, they know what country they recognize, with what border, what local name they give to features, ...

For names and the US it's the U.S. Board on Geographic Names so as long as Trump manages to get it to change the name, it's the new name. At least when seen from inside the US.

Don't like it ?

• If from the US, vote someone else in 4 years (if still a democracy) or overthrow the government.

• If from outside only the Mount McKinley change might affect you at some point as the default is to follow local country names, for the Gulf of America as long as Mexico and Cuba don't change their name for it I don't see it spreading.

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from vbfox@hachyderm.io

Toot

Written by Julien Roncaglia on 2025-01-29 at 15:49

Also "I'll switch to OpenStreetMap" might not be that good a of a solution except that they are slower to update, they tend to follow the official government names at some point...

Weird (+15min ???) timezone changes, border changes, name changes, banned emojis, ... governments and especially proto-dictators sure love fucking with all our reference data.

Created a dataset for anything ? Well I hope you added a way to have country specific overrides because at some point a politician will decide to break it !

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from vbfox@hachyderm.io

Descendants